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Q: How do I analyze samples that aren't included in your Firehose runs (e.g. Blood Normals, Solid Tissue Normals, etc.)?

A: All analysis-ready patient samples are available in our stddata archives; this will include matched normals, where available (but note that the so-called TCGA control samples are not included). Normals can be identified by inspection of the barcode schema below, in conjunction with the TCGA code tables. You can obtain the stddata archives using our firehose_get utilityor by traversing the FireBrowse user interfaceor stddata API. Each sample in the archive is identified by a TCGA Barcode that contains the sample type. As shown below, the Sampleportion of the barcode can be looked up in the sample type code table available here(as can the tissue source site, aka TSS, et cetera). In addition, FireBrowsemakes much of this information available programmatically in its metadata API.

TCGA Barcode Description: As described here, a batch is uniquely determined by the first shipment of a group of analytes (or plate) from the Biospecimen Core Resource. So, in most cases the plate number of a sample is effectively synonymous with the batch id of the sample; an exception to this is when additional analytes from a participant are subsequently shipped the batch id will remain fixed at the first plate number.